Just starting out...HELP!

[st20]

Hi, I'm currently on a diet (about my 100th!) but after reading some articles on here I think I'm going seriously wrong. Starving myself and doing lots of cardio is helping me to lose weight but I'm pretty sure it's not doing my body any good and it's definitely not helping my muscles to grow!

My aim is to lose fat and gain muscles but I just don't know where to begin! There are so many stories and articles out there which all seem to contradict each other. I know I should be eating lots of protein but I don't know when I should be eating and how much! And should I be having protein shakes?! I have also read many different articles on exercise...should I not be doing any cardio and just lift weights?! I'm currently going to the gym about 4 nights a week and doing a lot of cardio then some weights after but I definitely need to increase the amount of weights that I'm doing! Any advice would be greatly appreciated as at the moment I just don't know where to begin!

Thanks!

Steph

[GeekGrokker]

I'm hardly an expert in the field, but I'll tell you what has worked for me.

Forget Cardio

2-5 hours per week of easy effort. Hiking, casual biking, etc

1 all out effort each week. Sprints, tabata drills, kayaking your heart out etc.

Primal / Paleo diet

There's an 80/20 rule for the diet, but the closer you are to 100% the better. You'll feel the changes after a few weeks.

As for lifting, I'm trying to figure out the place for that right now.

Just starting to add that into my own regime. I've been doing bodyweight exercises for awhile, now graduating to the next level.

I've heard from a myriad number of sources that diet is 80% of your body composition including NF, and MDA.

That's what works for me. There's likely other simplified strategies out there.

Good luck!

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

[st20]

Hmmm so what is the 80/20 rule? I've read a little on the Paleo diet and I know someone at work who is on it and has been successful but I'm still a little sceptical, especially as to how easy it is to stick to it!

Thanks for your comments!

[Nucleus]

That's something weird I've wondered actually...the 80/20 usually relates to the Pareto principal that says most situations in life fall into an 80/20 pattern e.g. 20% of your activities account for 80% of your results. When I saw people using that ratio I tried to contort it a bit to make it fit that, but I think here it just means something's better than nothing and if you eat clean 80% of the time, you'll strike a balance between optimum health and achievability.

Or maybe it does fit and my brain's just on strike because I won't give it sugar. I don't know.

[ebm1224]

welcome to the forum! this stuff seems super confusing but it doesn't have to be. a piece of advice:

"opinions are like assholes. everyone has one. and everyone thinks that everyone else's stinks."

this is all too true with diet/exercise.

while alot of people subscribe to paleo/primal diet, it is by no means the only way to go. some advice to get you started.

1) what are you goals? is there a certain weight you want to achieve? a certain body fat percentage? certain blood pressure? certain physical achievements? spend some time to figure out what you want.

2) what do you eat? depending on your height/weight/sex/activity level will determine how much you need to eat. and, usually, you don't need supplements unless a doctor says so...so stay away from the protein shakes...at least at first.

3) exercise. aim for 3-5 days of working out a week. aim for 30 minutes to 1 hour each session. cardio is good but so is weight lifting. do the weight lifting before your cardio (after a quick warm up).

you can make yourself crazy with all the opinions out there. the best thing to do is see what you currently are doing and make small changes over time. look forward to hearing more from you!

[The Purple Diane]

Take a deep breath... there is a lot of information out there on the interwebs, it's easy to get overwhelmed!

Now... Who do you want to be like? Have you read Saint's success story? Staci's? Take a look at the things that made them successful. See if you can think of ways to apply any of those things in your own life.

Once you know which direction to go in, you can start making small changes.

You've found a wonderfully supportive community here. You should always feel free to ask lots and lots of questions... but right now, it seems like what you need to do is pick a direction and go in it.

Good luck! I hope this helps. And WELCOME!

Here are some links to the success stories:

http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/06/13/60-pounds-overweight-to-6-pack-abs/

http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/07/21/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/

[Mama T]

purple diane, you beat me to it! read spezzy's story - sounds like you're going through a lot of the stuff she went through as well.

as for paleo, i'm about 90% paleo (drink whole milk and the occasional nutrition bar when i'm in a hurry and didn't cook). i've been this way for almost two months, and don't even miss bread or cheese. i'd rather eat some eggs and meat because i know they'll fill me up and keep me that way for awhile. the point is, it's possible. just need to find what works for you.

if you want more information than you know what to do with, visit Mark's Daily Apple to learn more about primal: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/

[st20]

Yeah I have definitely learnt that there are a lot of opinions out there! Just got to sift through all the ones which aren't relevant!

I have read Staci's story which made me think that I'm majorly going wrong with what I'm doing! And I’ve seen how much weight she has also lost just by building muscle. Well I would love to lose weight and build muscle so her story sounds great!

A little history of my diet....I started a diet in August and I've since lost 17 pounds through basically starving myself and doing lots of cardio. I've been living on a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then the same at lunch with a yoghurt or some jelly and then something along the lines of a banana or apple and some soup or a salad in the evening. (Not the most nutritious diets I know!) So I know I need to eat a lot more and more regularly and I've read about all the good foods out there to help build muscle (I think I'm going to start on the Paleo diet) but I just can't work out from all the different articles when I should be eating and what kind of foods (e.g. carbs and proteins - which is best before and after work out?)

So my goals are to lose as much body fat as is possible/healthy and to build muscle! Don't get me wrong I don’t want to be an enormous body builder but I'm not one of these people who only wants a little bit of tone, I'd like to see my muscles!

My aim is to spend 4 maybe sometimes 5 nights a week in the gym so I also need to work out a plan of what to do...should I spend a day doing lots of cardio then purely weights on others? or is it best to do a little cardio everyday before weights?...again there are so many conflicting stories out there about what's best to do! Confusing!

Thanks for all your comments

[m00se]

I know it's confusing - I went though similar stages to you - lots of boring cardio and eating very little. Yes, it shed some pounds but it didn't make me feel any better (in fact, it made me feel worse), and yes, while I saw the numbers dropping on the scales, I wasn't having any damn fun at all. Soon as I got here I found loads of information that helped me on my road. Since coming here and making some modifications to my diet and my routine, I have had more gains in weeks than I had in previous months.

Simple answer: Eat (much) more (mostly dead animals), lift extremely heavy things often, and sprint from time to time.

I think the first important thing to say is: don't overcomplicate things. Just eat the right things (see below) and don't worry about your timings too much (other than eating lots of protein in the half hour or so after you finish lifting). The second thing is: what works for one person doesn't work for everyone. It's tempting to read someone's post saying 'this totally works, do it now' and, in trying it, you fail to get such good results. That's just because everyone's different. With those two points in mind, here's my suggestion.

Firstly, don't worry too much to start with about when you eat what. Your body doesn't clock into a new day magically at midnight and it doesn't know what you're going to be doing in an hour's time. It's just a machine, processing what you take in and doing what it, genetically, benefits it most. The bottom line is that our modern metabolisms are, to put not too fine a point on it, screwed up. We eat loads of refined and processed this, partially hydrogenated and emulsified that, high fructose the other. A major barrier that I found to fat loss and muscle gain was eating sugar and starchy carbohydrates (white flour, white bread, pasta etc.). Furthermore, and counterintuitively, eating too much of these things results in significant fat gain, but eating lots of fat doesn't. For a much more in-depth review of this matter (mostly because he explains it better than me, and to save me typing my fingers to the bone), see here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-the-primal-eating-plan/ and here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/

Soon as I stopped eating starchy and processed crap and started eating more fat, meat and eggs (eg. replacing a bowl of cereal every breakfast with 4-6 eggs and a few rashers of bacon fried in butter every breakfast) while lifting heavy and sprinting, I lost a crapload of body fat. It's all about reprogramming your metabolism to run on fat, decreasing the amount of insulin and therefore fat storage, and these together result in your body using stored fat for energy. Much more at MDA. In my humble opinion, if you want to pack on muscle and melt away fat you need to live mainly on large quantities of dead animals, with vegetables on the side. You also need to be doing the right workout.

Basically, I try and work out like a caveman would have lived every day. Long, boring cardio does burn fat, it's true, but it's not a patch on sprinting intervals or lifting weights. Lift heavy things three or four times per week (moving rocks), and sprint intervals (running away from things with big teeth) on a treadmill, outside, or on a bike, at about the same frequency, and you won't go too far wrong. Every so often, throw in a few hundred burpees as fast as you can (yay Spezzy) or do really fast manmakers until you collapse. YMMV of course, but I think it's a solid base to work from.

There are plenty of people on here with great advice and who are super-knowledgeable, you'll find out all you need to know here and more.

[st20]

Great reply, thanks for all your advice! It made me laugh! Looking forward to becoming a cave man! Going to start on Monday after clearing out the cupboards and buying lots of dead animals! Can't wait!